Boards›Gameplay

ARAM could use a "baron" to stop stallmates

Albigen··1 votes·1,159 views

In ARAM teams often stay very close to ("camp") their turret: They only clear waves and harass the other team.

A "camping" team can sometimes be beaten, if your team has a strong diver (such as Alistar) or better harass. But in some matchups it is simply not possible to defeat the enemy team under the turret. For example a team consisting of Varus, Xerath, Heimerdinger, Lucian & Sona will have both an incredible amount of waveclear, sustain and disengage. Considering their squishyness, they will probably never leave the safety of their turret until their enemy is severely worn down.

In Summoners Rift these kinds of stallmates are usually ended by baron fights. ARAM needs something like that.

What would be a good solution? My ideas:

  • Primary and secondary turrets slowly lose life and fall by themselves.
  • AOE damage is halfed on minions.
  • When the enemy team destroys your turret, their turret falls too. This would make the turrets like objectives that give your team money but also progress the game for the enemy team.
  • Your turrets deal less damage if the members of your team have all been alive for a while. This would make turrets more of a temporary safehaven after a big fight than a fortress.

6 Comments

ValyrianBlade2 votes

Stalling is a very viable strategy in ARAM. If you can't sit under your turret until level 11, or whenever your late-game team manages to get its stuff together, how are you supposed to compete?

The big thing about ARAM is identifying when your team is stronger or weaker than the other team. There are many team comps that are terribly weak early in an ARAM and simply will be decimated if they try to fight early, leading to many kills and snowballing of the enemy team. If instead they sit under turret for a while and avoid fights early, they can get to a point where they can actually compete in the match without being too far behind.

When you're the attacking team in this scenario? First, hog their outer health spawn, they should never have access to it. Second, make fights whenever possible, and damage their turret whenever possible. They have people standing in front of the turret while clearing the minions you pushed in? Poke them down hard. They all standing behind the turret and letting ranged waveclear it? Get some damage on that turret! With your team getting 3 healths to 1, you should be able to wear them out (even if they have one of the super annoying ARAM champions like Sona or Soraka - in these cases you should focus on bursting down the healer if you get the chance, and otherwise bursting down whoever you can - get the kill before they can be healed up).

And when all else is said and done, ARAMs aren't balanced. Some champions will always be much stronger than others. Healers in particular. There's not much to do about that, it's a special game mode (was a player made mode originally). It's meant to be fun. Yes, play hard and try to win, but no one really freaks out in ARAMs like they do on the rift.

foinhas1 votes

+1 for that last setence :D Aram is soooo much more "civilized" than SR...

Albigen1 votes

Stalling is a fine strategy, up to a point. But there is a difference between stalling and camping.

For example, a few days ago I was against a waveclear team like that defending their secondary turret, all level 15 with a couple of items and about 10 more kills than us. We stopped pushing as a team and waited for them to come out. But they flat out refused to come out for several minutes. I asked them in /all chat how we could progress the game and they flat out told us that we had to dive them. So we tried that. They killed us, ran across the map to get one of our turrets and 2 of them suicided. After that, did they become aggressive? Nope, they waited again for us to dive.

ARAM is supposed to be fun and reward players who look to make plays. It shouldn't be a match of "who can wait the longest".

The strategy you mention - harassing the enemy team/tower and getting 3 healths - does work but only if both teams are somewhat balanced in their range/harass. Champions such as Amumu, Renekton, Vayne, Master Yi, Wukong and other fighters and tanks simply have no ranged harass and champions such as Teemo or Kha'Zix have too short a range.

The health+mana spots were created to combat camping, but especially mid to late game (when champions get Athenas and better sustain) they just aren't enough anymore. That's why the game would be better if extra incentives became available to fight after a certain amount of minutes.

ValyrianBlade1 votes

Well that comment is fair. In over 200 ARAM games I've never seen it happen. The waveclear comps are typically the ones pushing and harassing you under tower. If you're the team with poke and you're forcing the enemy to come to your tower, you're just being lame. To be fair though, Banner of Command on a few players (make the minions immune to spells, their waveclear disappears) may have been a viable counter to the strategy.

To be fair, in my ARAM experience, it seems that close matches are often decided by who is willing to sit under turret and let the other team make the play. The turret advantage is enough to turn the fight and it seems wrong overall...

An idea to make a neutral monster work? Put a few shrines around the middle of the map, give them a reasonable charge time. Once a team has charged all (e.g. 3) shrines, summon the monster in the middle of the map. That way the map doesn't need to change at all, no one will accidentally open the shrines, and you get your monster. Not sure what the buff should be though...

fasega1 votes

I am not against a objective on aram to help stalls my only question would be where would you even have the space to put it. Is it going to just randomly appear like Poro king did or would it be in a fixed location. Maybe they could add an area to the map to put this neutral monster.

foinhas1 votes

I never had this problem in ARAM...

More from Gameplay

3 Refunds per season, upvote if you want 3 refunds per season.
Gameplay764 comments
7,167
votes
3 Refunds per season, upvote if you want 3 refunds per season.
Gameplay156 comments
3,510
votes
UPVOTE FOR URF
Gameplay606 comments
2,440
votes
Yes plz.
Gameplay456 comments
1,721
votes
3 Refunds per season, up vote if you want 3 refunds per season.
Gameplay114 comments
1,716
votes
When is ANYONE at riot going to address the awful new player experience?
Gameplay634 comments
1,383
votes

More by Albigen

Dynamic queue is unfair to support solo players
Gameplay1 comments
2
votes